


the only language you ever learned

by spiekiel



Series: the hundred [9]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Aggressive Negotiations, Established Relationship, F/M, Ice Nation - Freeform, Marriage, Trigedasleng
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 10:27:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4873333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiekiel/pseuds/spiekiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short, startled scream, Clarke falling through the ground, disappearing from sight ahead of him, and he doesn’t have time to stop even if he wanted to - he’s scrabbling for purchase, flat on his back and sliding, a gaping crevasse open in the ice in front of him, and then he’s weightless -</p>
            </blockquote>





	the only language you ever learned

He should never have agreed to bring Clarke.  

 

Her face is already bright red from cold even through three layers of scarves, he can see her shivering under a half dozen coats and overcoats and a bearskin cloak, snowflakes are accumulating on her eyelashes and he can’t even feel the hypothermia setting into his own bones because of how concentrated he is on her - 

 

“ _Osir laik Klark en Belomi kom Skaïkru,”_ Clarke is shouting over the howling wind.“ _Osir lok osiron gonakru op.Yo Azgeda don jak emo op, en yo kru na breik emo au.”_

 

Bellamy can hardly make out the shadowy forms of the Ice Nation men through the heavy grey wash of the blizzard they’re in the middle of, but there’s a _runrunrun_ feeling at the back of his neck that usually means there’s a threat just out of sight, a battallion of soldiers lying in wait to ambus them that he can’t see, and they left Kane and the rest of their delegation behind a while ago, all he has is the spear on his back - 

 

“ _Yo na bants au yo tot na wan kru op,”_ comes the harsh reply, and Bellamy feels Clarke stiffen beside him.His fingers twitch for the spear.“ _Emon gonplai ste sun odon.”_

 

Clarke takes a step forward, and Bellamy’s feet follow her instinctively. _“Azgeda don jak osiron gonakru op kom honon.Yo laik teina kom Skaïkru en Trikru - “_

 

 _“Jus drein jus daun,”_ the man’s voice sounds closer, but Bellamy still can’t make out his form clearly.“ _Osir Azgeda no laik teina kom yo.Yon gonakru don na wan osiron gona op - “_

 

_“Spichen - “_

 

And suddenly the Ice warrior is right in Clarke’s face, clear as day and right in front of them, scowling down into her face from an inch away, and Bellamy’s hand flies to his spear but Clarke doesn’t budge, just squares her shoulders and scowls right back, and he stills with the spear halfway drawn.

 

 _“Yo na bants au yo tot na wan kru op,”_ the man repeats.Seven years on the Ground means Bellamy has picked up some trigedasleng, but it’s more the inflection that makes his stomach turn, black disdain.“ _Jus drein jus daun.Yon gonakru emon gonplai ste sun odon.”_

 

“ _Yo ste_ branwada _,”_ Clarke snarls. _“Sonraun won gona no bilaik teina kom tot Skaïkru en Trikru.”_

 

“ _Yo na_ bants _,”_ the man spits, and Bellamy sees Clarke’s eyes narrow over her scarves, _“au na wan yu op.”_

 

The Ice warrior steps back and a second later he’s lost to the snow, but Bellamy’s hand doesn’t leave the spear, even as Clarke comes back to step into the shelter of his body.He shifts to block the wind, hopes he’s putting himself between her and the rest of the Ice crew, but there’s no way to know - 

 

“They aren’t going to negotiate,” Clarke says, just loud enough to be heard in the calmer air between them.“They have all the bargaining chips, and they know it.We have nothing to offer.”

 

Bellamy’s eyes flicker between the dim, whitewashed landscape around them and her eyes, clear blue and focused despite the sub-zero temperatures and the four klicks they walked to get here, the two hours of sleep she got last night on fur and wool pallet, the stress of two weeks of travel and a month of worry over their lost battallion, over Miller, the failing relationship with the Floukru, the threat of the Ice Nation - 

 

“So we have two options,” he says.“We concede the loss of eight soldiers, and go back to the delegation, and the alliance with the Ice Nation stays intact for now.Or we concede the loss of the alliance, go back to the delegation, and get our people out before they kill them.”

 

Clarke presses further into his body heat, the coarse fur lining her hood scratching the underside of his chin, and he wraps an arm around her as best he can.  

 

“I’m not going back without Nate,” she says.“The alliance is going to fall through anyways.We can only ignore so much infringement into our territory.”

 

Bellamy doesn’t argue, because he knows he was never going to be able to leave his best friend to death by one thousand cuts anyways, because it has to have been at least a couple of hours since they lost sight of the caravan, and the sun will start going down soon.“Let’s get moving.”

 

Clarke steps away.“Give me the compass - “

 

He can’t hear the high-pitched whistling through the wind until it’s too late.  

 

The arrow emerges from the snow and slashes across Clarke’s arm in a split second, disappearing silently the next.Bellamy’s scrambling for her even as she regains her own footing, gloved hand clamped down over her bicep, and then the whistling again and he takes her down into the icy snow bank with him when his leg goes out from under him, an arrow embedded in his calf - 

 

Clarke snaps the arrow sharply so there’s only an inch sticking out of his leg, and he grunts in pain, but in the same breath he’s commanding, “ _Run - “_

 

They get to their feet on the slick ground by sheer force of will, Bellamy’s leg shooting pain, arrows whizzing in and out of view all around them, and it’s a good thing the Ice warriors can’t see any better than they can - 

 

He feels exposed, running a few strides behind her, his spear useless, he can’t do anything to keep her safe except keep watching her back, and then it’s - 

 

A short, startled scream, Clarke falling through the ground, disappearing from sight ahead of him, and he doesn’t have time to stop even if he wanted to - he’s scrabbling for purchase, flat on his back and sliding, a gaping crevasse open in the ice in front of him, and then he’s weightless - 

 

It’s dark.

 

His head is pounding.The silence is deafening.He hears, as if from very far away, chunks of ice falling around him.The palest whisper of grey light trickles in from the crack of the crevasse, very far up.

 

He makes himself move his leg.It hurts, but it’s functional.The other one, too.He tries his arms.They both move.A few fingers don’t respond.A couple of his ribs feel broken.He takes a breath, and it hurts. 

 

Someone groans near his right hand.“Clarke,” he says, his voice low and strained.He makes himself sit up, crawls on his hands and knees until he feels her, his fingertips catching the ankle of her boot.“Clarke - “

 

“Bell,” she slurs, moving under his hands, and his heart skips a beat so hard it hurts, “what - “

 

“They drove us into a trap,” he says.“Some kind of chasm.They’ll either be here to finish us off in a few seconds, or they’re counting on letting us freeze to death down here.Make it look like an accident.”

 

He feels - and sees vaguely, her silhouette like in the very early hours of the morning, when everything is still grainy and faded - her sit up, using his shoulder to lever herself.Her scarves have been pulled away from her face, but it’s warmer down here, her breath is hot and worryingly metallic on his face.“I have a glow stick,” she says, “third coat, front right pocket.”

 

Bellamy finds it, cracks it and shakes it until there’s a faint green glow illuminating the bottom of the crevasse.“We’re further down than I thought,” Clarke says, softly.And they are - the opening and what little daylight it affords has to be at least sixteen feet above them, sheer ice walls on all sides.  

 

He files that problem away for later, and turns his attention to Clarke.Her forehead is smeared with blood, from a gash along her hairline, but it doesn’t look to serious, the arrow cut a line across her cheek just under her eye, but it’s stopped bleeding already, she’s holding her shoulder at an angle that suggests some damage to her clavicle, but the arm’s moving fine - 

 

“Are you okay?” he asks, anyways.“Does everything feel okay?”

 

Clarke’s hand flies to her stomach.“I - yeah.Yeah, everything feels fine.I think I landed feet first.”  

 

Bellamy moves closer and gathers her against his chest, the glow stick in one glove, ducks and presses his lips briefly to her pulse point under all those layers, his hand splaying over the four-month swell of her stomach because his heartbeat never calms down enough for him to think straight unless he has both of them safe with him. 

 

“I don’t think we’re climbing out of here,” Clarke says.She still doesn’t sound defeated, though, and that’s one thing that he’s always loved about her even back when he hated her - 

 

“Well,” he says, “we’re not dying down here, either.So we’ll just have to figure something else out.”

 

She tucks deeper into him for a long moment, then does that _shouldershake_ reset that she does - on the battlefield, when they’ve lost a man, after she’s talked to her mother, when they’ve just buried a friend and they have to go right to work again - and pushes away from him enough that they’re each breathing their own air, exhalations in two clouds of frozen steam instead of one. 

 

Clarke holds out her hand for the glow stick, and he gives it to her.She climbs carefully to her feet, slipping slightly on the pure ice, and then snaps at him when he tries to get up, “Stay down.”

 

She walks the length of their crevasse one way, back to the middle, and then the other.She stops at the far end, at enough of a distance that the green light is fainter than the light overhead, and turns back to look at him.“There’s another tunnel over here.”

 

“I’m not sure this can be called a _tunnel_ , Clarke - “

 

“It looks man-made.It’s too geometric to be natural.”She crouches, running her hand over the opening, holds the glow stick in it but it doesn’t illuminate much of anything.“It looks like it slopes down.”

 

“We don’t want to go _deeper_ into the ice.”

 

“The Ice Nation is on a plateau.If this takes us to the edge of the plateau - “

 

Bellamy stands up, keeping the weight off his injured calf, and hobbles towards her.“Clarke, the chances of that tunnel taking us to the edge of this thing and not straight down to the ocean - “

 

“It’s better than just sitting here waiting to die,” she cuts, and she’s got that frown on that means he’s not winning this fight no matter how right he is.“It’s wide enough for a man to crawl through, there’s no water source that could have made it, and if this is a trap someone had to get here to build it.”

 

Bellamy eases down to examine the tunnel himself, running his fingers around the rim.It feels rough, like it was hewn, and in the green glow he can see that it’s a gentle slope, for at least the first few meters.He looks back at the crevasse, and then he looks at Clarke, still making her stubborn face at him.

 

He hopes to hell that their kid has her eyes.

 

“Fine,” he says.“But I go first.”She opens her mouth to argue, but he cuts her off.“For all we know, this takes us right to the middle of the Ice Nation’s stronghold.If I come out to a faceful of arrows, I can at least yell for you to stay hidden.”

 

She doesn’t look like she likes it, but she nods anyways, and that’s good enough for him.He hands her the glowstick, eases his legs over the edge of the tunnel, and takes a breath.

 

Then he pushes off, and he’s falling again.

 

He can feel his back skimming along the ice at what feels like a hundred klicks a second, can hear the rush of the ice tunnel around him on all sides, and the green glow is gone in a second, leaving him in pitch darkness, and all he can think for a terrifying handful of seconds is how it would be to die under water, miles under the ice, in the black - 

 

The pale grey light comes at him like the flare of an explosion.

 

He shoots out the end of the tunnel and into a bank of fresh snow, buried for a moment before he’s scrambling out, brushing flurries out of his face, looking around frantically, but there’s nothing, just white and wind and the gargantuan wall of the plateau in front of him.

 

Clarke comes out of the tunnel with a breathy shout, tucking and rolling into the snow bank.He crawls over to help her up, not quite able to make it to his feet, but she’s smiling while she bats snow out of her coats, and she clasps the front of his bearskin.“Told you,” she says.

 

He wipes a last snowflake out of her eyebrow with his thumb, and leans forward to kiss her gently.Her lips curl against his, but then the smile falls away and she presses in hard, urgent - 

 

Bellamy pulls away.“Sun’s going down soon.The caravan’s too far.”

 

She hums in agreement, her hands fisted in the fur around his hood.“The plateau feels like it’s blocking most of the wind from the storm.We should make camp at the base.”

 

Sundown finds them under a makeshift shelter fashioned from a configuration of their bearskin cloaks and Clarke’s scarves, laying on the edges, Bellamy’s back to the wall of the plateau, Clarke nestled against his chest, their overcoats piled on top of both of them, body heat building, gloves gone and their hands buried in each other’s clothes, her cold nose pressed in against his collarbone - 

 

The wind is still howling outside, but way down against the base of the cliff the air is peaceful and still, their shelter rustling softly every few seconds above them.The glow stick is starting to fade, easing them into the dark of arctic night, and by the minimal green light of it - 

 

He finds her hand, and pulls it to his face, pressing his lips to sworls of ink around her trigger finger, the pattern that matches the one on his own skin down to the last minute detail.  

 

The glow stick gives up entirely, and then it’s just the two of them in the gloom, close enough that he can feel it every time she blinks, can feel the soft vibrations of her heartbeat and imagines he can feel a third, too.Under everything, he rubs his hand up her back, trailing his thumb carefully from pure muscle memory over the ridge of a vertical scar at her waist.  

 

“We should have stayed home,” he murmurs, “let someone else handle this.Our priorities need to be rearranged.We’re going to be parents.”

 

Clarke sighs, air moving against his neck.“I promised Monty I would get Nate for him.”

 

Bellamy turns his lips into her forehead.“I know we have a long history of taking care of our people before ourselves,” he says, lips brushing over her skin, “but they’re all grown up now.Our kid is gonna come first.”

 

Clarke turns her face into his shoulder and just breathes.“It figures that we would have this conversation in the middle of hostile territory,” she grumbles.  

 

He smiles, can’t help it.“We spend most of our time in hostile territory.What did you expect?”

 

Clarke doesn’t answer, but a long minute later she moves so she would be staring him in the eyes, if they could see each other.“Is it dumb that I’ve never been this scared before?” she asks, and if she weren’t forcing it so hard her voice would have wavered.He knows her well enough after all their lives to see that.

 

“No,” he answers, and he knows it’s true, because he’s scared as he’s ever been, too.“ _Hodnes laik kwelnes,_ right? But we’ll figure it out.You and me have done tougher stuff than this, princess.”

 

She kisses him, lips languid and easy, like a million times before.He sinks into it like coming home, her mouth moving against his, her nose brushing his cheek, forgets the ice and the cold and the Grounders after them and just breathes with her, content to press soothing kisses to her lips until she’s relaxing into him -

 

He and Clarke have two mentalities, but really they just have one - they’re the greatest military commanders the Skaïkru has, legends and stories and flesh and blood, harbingers of death and avenging angels, and the only thing they’ve ever really needed is each other, as long as they’re together -

 

They fall asleep like that - tangled as close together as they can get, turned in against the elements, and the next thing Bellamy’s aware of is hours later - 

 

Clarke shaking him awake insistently, one hand pressed over his mouth.  

 

It’s still dark, but he can actually see the whites of Clarke’s eyes, the sort of panicked that she only gets when she’s really exhausted, which sends a spike of anticipatory adrenaline through Bellamy’s system.

 

She pulls her hand away, and then, very carefully, peels back the inner layer of their shelter.  

 

Through the bearskin, Bellamy can see the light of torches moving outside.They look to be far off still, but if they’re close enough to be seen through the snow, then - 

 

A visceral yell rips across the ice, horrible and sickeningly familiar.

 

“Nate,” Clarke whispers, involuntarily.  

 

Bellamy knows.He knows that they should stay hidden, that they can’t take the Ice warriors on their own, that if they want to stand any chance they need Kane and the rest of the delegation, that if they move there’s a very real chance he won’t be able to protect his wife and unborn child.

 

But he _knows_.Knows that there was never any chance of either of them becoming the kind of people that could stand to stay still and let their men die.  

 

“Do you still have knives?” Clarke asks, always a few steps ahead of him.

 

They put some space between them, and he presses one into her hand.She grasps the hilt backhand, automatic after so long at some war or another.“Stay low,” he says.“Stay under the bearskins.The wind is loud enough to hide us.Go for the throat, and stab.Stay hidden until you can’t.”

 

She meets his gaze and nods once, and he has never loved anything so fiercely as he loves her, his goddess of war since she was seventeen, she can hold her own and hold whatever he can’t carry, too - 

 

“We’re both coming out of this, Bellamy,” she orders.“I’m not raising this child fatherless.”

 

He just nods.  

 

Then Miller screams again and they’re moving, separating under the bearskins in the freezing open air, and he can see the Ice warriors clear as day, standing in a circle around four enormous monoliths of ice with their men lashed to them, torches lit and faces alight with malicious mirth - 

 

He moves around the exterior of the circle, just out of the reach of the flames’ light, and then he lies in wait, every muscle in his body straining to run forward as a Grounder drags a jagged knife across Miller’s chest, but the timing has to be - 

 

Another scream tears itself out of Miller’s throat, ragged and nauseous, and across the circle, Clarke slips out from under her bearskin and downs a Grounder with a jab to the neck, blood flying over the snow.He falls silently, unseen, and then - 

 

Bellamy rises from beneath his cover and takes out two Ice warriors in rapid succession, leaving just five in the circle, but when Clarke goes for her second kill, the man sees her and cries out - 

 

Then it’s a flurry of movement and shouting and Bellamy ducks under a sword to jam his knife under a warrior’s chin, but it’s stuck in bone and it falls away with the body, so he draws his spear but one man’s about to come up behind Clarke, and he throws - 

 

The whistle of an arrow, a bright pain in his chest - 

 

Clarke takes another one down with a knife to the eye, the Grounder howling, Bellamy takes a kick to his bad leg and goes down on one knee, manages to block to flurry of punches that follow, and then Clarke’s there, ripping her knife through his assailant’s throat, her eyes wide and horrified, and -

 

“Bell, no - “

 

He feels hollow, numb, looks down and there’s - 

 

The shaft of an arrow, where his heart should be, that shouldn’t be there, should it - 

 

Black spots in his vision, and Clarke saying his name, and the sky, the snow falling in his eyes, black, Clarke, Miller’s face, more of their men, _painpainpain_ , alive, lifting, _black,_ Clarke sobbing his name, hands on his chest, warm and slick, too cold too hot, running, jostling, _painpainpain_ , sunlight, shouting, running, the hiss of an air lock, Kane, Clarke’s hand in his he’d know it anywhere, _painpainpainpain,_ blood, blood, hands in his chest, blood, black, Clarke, _come back_ , Clarke, black - 

 

He wakes slowly.

 

The interior of the medical tent greets him.His throat feels dry, his eyes crusty, limbs stiff like he’s been in the same position for days.There are bandages over his chest, dull pain when he breathes.  

 

He thinks he’s alone, but then Clarke moves in her sleep, her fingers sliding through his.Her hair is a mess of golden curls, the gash on her forehead mostly healed, her lips pressed against his knuckles over his trigger finger, curled up in a blanket in the chair next to his bed, and he can’t help reaching out to touch her.

 

She blinks her eyes open as his hand settles over the nape of her neck, raising her head to look at him with a sleepy smile that’s just about the best thing he’s ever seen.

 

“I thought I told you not to die,” she says accusingly, her voice scratchy with disuse, no real fire behind it.

 

“I didn’t die,” he says, and his voice is even worse.“I’m fine.”

 

Clarke just stares tiredly.“You did die, actually.Several times.And then you tried really hard to stay dead.”

 

He doesn’t know what to say to that, so he takes the easy way out and pulls her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to her palm, then to the pulse point on her wrist.She climbs into the bed with him, curls up against his side and tucks her head under his chin, and he breathes a little easier once his arms are around her.

 

“We got them all,” she says.“All our people home safe and sound.I told Monty he owes us a month’s worth of babysitting duty.Raven’s helping Miller get back on his feet.We can rest easy for a while.”

 

He puts his hand carefully on her stomach, and she lays hers over it.“Rest easy, huh?” he murmurs into her hair.“I don’t know if you and me are really cut out for the whole _rest_ thing, princess.”

 

She laughs, and it sounds exhausted but it also sounds relieved.“Well,” she says, “I guess we’ll just have to figure something else out, then.”It takes less than a minute for Clarke to drift off, and then Bellamy’s eyes are drooping too, and under his palm, he feels a heartbeat.  

 


End file.
